A Girlie Jones Adventure

About me

Alisa Krasnostein is World Fantasy Award winning editor and publisher at Twelfth Planet Press and part of the Galactic Suburbia Podcast Team. She was Executive Editor of the review website Aussie Specfic in Focus!.
Currently working on a PhD in Publishing, in her spare time she is a critic, reader, reviewer, runner, environmentalist, knitter, quilter and puppy lover. She is a fulltime Mum.

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Last night we watched the long awaited, Veronica Mars movie. For those who have no idea what the what, Veronica Mars was a three seasons long show on the old WB Network that came just after shows like Dawsons Creek, Buffy, Roswell etc and was a noir detective show with Veronica Mars as the teen private eye protagonist. I know! Right?! And yet it got cancelled after just 3 seasons.

Veronica Mars was a popular kid in Neptune, California and hung out with the rich kids until her best friend is murdered. After that, her life went to hell – her mother left, her father got fired as the local sheriff and she was kicked out of the popular crowd but not before her drink gets spiked and she is raped whilst unconscious at one of those rich kid parties she used to enjoy so much. So we enter the pilot episode. Veronica is now an outsider, loner at school and working in her dad’s private detective agency (Mars Investigations) in her spare time, determined to solve the murder of her best friend.

Veronica is smart and strong. She always has a come back. She always has a plan. And she always manages to wangle the situation to get her way. Despite – or perhaps because of – what’s happened to her, she has a very pragmatic, cynical view of the world and people. She could get depressed about all she’s lost of her old life but instead she uses what she has left (mostly her smart mouth and resourcefulness) to look out for herself. Technically she might be morally dubious but usually it’s in the scheme of helping someone out or exposing someone else’s corruption and that makes it ok, right?

Veronica Mars was a show with a strong female lead that was something other than a pair of angry trousers (Tansy’s TM). Her superpower is that she’s smart, inventive, resourceful and sure of herself. And a woman being the detective, instead of the broad? SO FREAKING COOL.

The first season was all about solving Lily Cain’s murder. And that had us worried that maybe the show would fall over in season 2. But that didn’t happen. It was still awesome. And so was season 3. And then there was the rumour that there might be a spinoff sequel where Veronica joins the FBI. I saw some little clips of her finishing up at Quantico. But then nothing. And there were rumours off an on about how there could be a movie. And this show was so awesome! Every now and then Kristen Bell would rally the Marshmallows and encourage them to lobby Warner Bros. She would do a movie if given the chance. And then last year at first I thought it was just a hoax, but there it was – a Kickstarter to raise the funds from fans of the show to make this movie already! And within 24 hours they’d reached the first million. But alas, they were only allowing US fans to fund it! Eventually they managed to negotiate the rights with Warner to let the rest of the world play and records were broken with the amount raised and the number of backers. And they made the movie.

March 14 was delivery day and (after wayyyyyy too many backer updates) there in my inbox was the download code to download VERONICA MARS!

I didn’t want to just download that and watch it on my laptop late at night by myself. So I invited some friends over, we borrowed a projector and screen and we had a small cinema in our house to watch it!

AND IT WAS AWESOME!

And it has IRA GLASS (from This American Life) in it as well.

Anyway. It’s 10 years after high school, Veronica is a lawyer interviewing for her first job out of college in NYC and she’s happy. She comes home to help a friend out, investigate a murder and attend her high school reunion. It’s Veronica at her best! And Neptune still at its worst.

I was so worried that after everything, the movie would suck. Or that it wouldn’t be everything I was hoping it would be. Or that it would be 90 minute movie with a straight, obvious plot and then the end. But it was so much more. And I don’t mind one bit that they’ve written it with ways to launch off another series or movie. I’m a fan, I want more.

As things go, it was really interesting to see crowdfunding used to finance what should have been a Hollywood movie. And I think they did amazing with the budget that they had. It’s an interesting idea, perhaps a gamechanger, on the way movies might be funded in the future. You either need 1 person or entity to sink a huge investment into your project or nearly 95000 people with just a bit of cash each. But now, even though the movie happened, it could still be considered a flop because – 95000 fans willing to pay for the movie they wanted is still a small crowd when you consider success by the box office numbers. I’m fascinated by this and in seeing what will happen next. I’ve already preordered the first novel which apparently picks up at the end of this movie but won’t get in the way of a second one …